


the way out is through

by Nokomis



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-16
Updated: 2012-05-16
Packaged: 2017-11-05 11:29:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/405902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nokomis/pseuds/Nokomis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Little by little, Natasha becomes part of the team.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the way out is through

**Author's Note:**

> Written for tangleofthorns for the prompt, _As for the spider, she's feeling for an open seam between the walls._ \- Idra Novey. Set post-movie.

After the battle, Natasha sits across from Tony Stark at a shawarma restaurant, which is abandoned other than the employees sweeping up debris. He looks tired and worn and despite the wisecracks he keeps making, there is something cold and faraway in his eyes.

She did not save him. She closed the portal, knowing he was still in another dimension with a nuclear bomb set to explode, and she didn’t care that his life was the price she was paying.

Natasha thinks that if she were a good person, the sort of person who was a superhero and on the same team as Captain America, that she would feel guilty about paying that price so willingly.

The battle is won. Natasha helped save the city, the world, the fucking day. She thinks she should feel better about it than she does, that she should be able to wipe some of her ledger clean.

But she is still Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow, and all she did was follow orders. The victory is not hers.

*

She expects to return to normal SHIELD duties after the smoke has cleared, but instead Fury sends her to Brooklyn.

“Help him out,” he says, and she finds herself in a gym that has somehow escaped time for the last seventy years, leaning against a doorframe as she watches Steve angrily destroy punching bag after punching bag.

Fury has a terrible sense of humor, she thinks. Natasha is the last person who should be teaching someone else to deal with their demons, but it is an assignment and she will do it to the best of her abilities.

“What do you want?” she asks, no-nonsense and forceful. Steve is a soldier and takes orders well, but Natasha has seen him lead. He knows his mind, even if he’s not always willing to vocalize what he wants.

He looks at her, wide-eyed and startled, then his whole body just sags. “I want everyone I love to be alive and well.”

Natasha understands, suddenly, why Fury sent her. “Some things are impossible.”

“I don’t know how to live in this world,” Steve says, barely a whisper. 

“Neither does anyone else,” Natasha tells him. “But we’ve all got to try.”

*

Next time, she brings Clint. 

The agents have been treating Steve like a relic from a better time, but Natasha knows the look of a man who has seen too much war and death. 

Sometimes, they simply work out side-by-side in Steve’s gym. Steve punches away his frustrations while Natasha and Clint spar.

She’s always loved sparring with Clint. He doesn’t hold back or pull his punches. They’ve worked together so long that sparring is familiar and comfortable, and it’s more like playing than anything else Natasha does. Dodge, kick, twist, bend, hit. 

Intellectually Natasha knows there’s little benefit to sparring with Clint anymore; they know each other’s moves far too well to learn anything. It’s stagnation. 

But Natasha won’t give it up, still loves the way Clint’s knuckles graze off her arm as he deflects a true punch, loves the solid feel of his body when she pulls him down to the mats. 

Steve is watching them, and when Clint finally manages to get her into the headlock he’s been attempting for the past twelve moves, Natasha yields and looks up at Steve. “Your turn?”

Steve chooses Clint as his partner, but not, Natasha thinks, entirely out of a misguided sense of chivalry. He pulls his punches with Clint – she’s seen what he can do when he doesn’t, it would turn ugly very quickly if he didn’t and Natasha doesn’t want to think about what she would have to do to take down Captain America – but the fight is surprisingly dirty.

“I thought you were the clean-cut wholesome kid,” Clint teases after Steve nearly knees him during a takedown.

“I’m just a kid from Brooklyn,” Steve says, his party line but this time there’s an edge to it that Natasha has never noticed before. “I was never big enough to fight back, not really, but that doesn’t mean I never picked up on how the other kids fought.”

Natasha smiles at him. He’s right, there’s a certain kind of lesson to be learned from being the victim. Natasha has used that against countless men. 

“You should fight Nat, then,” Clint pants. He doesn’t have superhuman stamina, and the sparring has lasted long enough that he’s lying on his back on the mats, staring at the rafters. “She could teach your bullies a thing or two about how to fight dirty.”

Steve gives her that wholesome, all-American grin that was plastered on trading cards and recruiting posters. “I don’t doubt it. You kind of remind me of my girl, you know.”

Natasha raises an eyebrow, and Clint snorts. “You’ve never known any girls like her, I promise.”

“Peggy Carter,” Steve says dreamily. “She once shot at me. Claimed it was to test my shield, but we both knew better than that.”

Fury does everything on purpose, Natasha knows. 

*

Tony claims he was the one who wanted to throw the party, but Natasha spent enough time around him to see that this is Pepper Potts’ doing all the way through. Tony likes _parties_ , not dinners, and if it was Tony’s doing, Natasha wouldn’t be sitting at a too-fancy table between Bruce Banner and Clint, trying her best not to edge further away from Bruce. She strangely misses Thor. His boisterous cheer would have lightened the mood.

Bruce doesn’t look stressed – now that she’s seen what the transformation looks like as he’s fighting it, she knows it’s unmistakable – but he keeps giving her these sad, apologetic looks, and Natasha thinks she might shove her gold-plated fork through his sternum if he doesn’t stop it soon.

When Bruce starts to say, “I really am—“ it’s Clint who stops him mid-sentence, all the while grabbing Natasha’s right hand and guiding it back down to the table to set down her fork.

“She’s fine,” Clint reassures Bruce, and Natasha doesn’t need to have someone else speak for her. She narrows her eyes and begins to tell Clint that when he squeezes her hand again, firm and steady, and says, “And I’m doing this for everyone’s benefit, Bruce. I don’t really want to see what happens when Natasha loses it and stabs you for apologizing to her.”

Bruce lets out a nervous laugh and Natasha glares at Clint. She stiffly says, “I just want to forget it,” and across the table Tony meets her eye.

Pepper distracts everyone by asking Steve to try some sushi. The dinner soon disintegrates into shoving modern cuisine at Captain America, and recording his resulting faces – some happy, some disgusted – on various smart phones for, presumably, future blackmail.

Natasha does not thank Pepper, but she does concentrate hard on not being unnerved by Bruce for the rest of the evening. 

*

“How’s your ledger coming?”

Clint is the only one allowed to ask her such things. She doesn’t answer him, just keeps arranging her knives on the table before her. One of the throwing knives has a knick in the blade; she tests its edge, wondering if it’s worth the effort to get it repaired, or if she should just replace it.

Clint sits beside her and picks up a four-inch blade. He twirls it in his hand and says, “Nat, this group… we don’t fit in.”

“Are you quitting?” she asks. Clint hasn’t been the same since Loki, and Natasha has been waiting on this.

“Are you?” he asks instead.

“No,” she says. “I am not.”

She’s surprised him. They know each other so well, but at heart, they see the world different ways. 

“Why not?” he asks. “We’re not good, Nat. Not like they are.”

“We’re all broken, Clint,” Natasha tells him gently. “Steve is living with ghosts, Bruce is holding onto humanity by an even smaller margin than we are. Tony is—“ she pauses here. Tony’s issues are at once written all over him and so private she feels like an intruder just thinking of them. “Tony has as much red in his ledger as we do. He just didn’t pull the trigger himself.”

“So you’re going to stay,” Clint says.

“I’m going to help,” she replies. “Myself as much as anyone.” She touches his hand. “Why did Loki pick you, Clint?”

Clint shakes his head. “I’m not taking a madman’s words to heart.”

Natasha smiles, then wraps her arms around him and rests her head against his chest. The distant beating of his heart through his armor steadies her, and she does what she does best. “You have heart, Hawkeye. You see everything else so clearly. Why can’t you see this?”

He knows, she knows he does, but still he takes in a deep breath and wraps his arms around her. “Why are you so certain this is what I need?”

 _Because it’s what I need,_ she could say. _Because I don’t want to do this alone._

“Trust me,” she says instead.

Clint knows her well enough to know that he shouldn’t, but Natasha knows he will anyway. She hopes he won’t resent her for it.


End file.
